Should light magic have been different?

[Wizard]

(This counts for FE7 and FE8, but not FE6.)

I noticed that in FE7 and FE8, light magic is a heck of a lot worse than anima. As a basic example, the stats:

Lightning has 4 might, 95 accuracy, 5 crit and a whopping 6 weight. This means that when Serra from FE7 promotes, she won't be able to use the weakest light tome without losing attack speed. (It was unlikely that she'd be used for combat anyway, but you know.)

Fire, on the other hand, has 5 might, 90 accuracy, no crit, and a weight of 4. This, at least in my opinion, is a fair bit better than its light counterpart. The only stats that lightning beats it at is accuracy- which is fairly high for most tomes apart from some special dark ones, anyway- and crit, which is nice, but not necessary. In my opinion, light tomes should at least have reduced weight.

What do you guys think? Should they be changed completely, along with the stats of all tomes in FE8 and FE7? Should only the weight be reduced a bit to make light magic-users more viable? Or should nothing change at all?

[Elieson]

Fe9 and 10 have the identical wt problem. Fe7 enemies have shitty res tho, so glass cannon lucius an even an average serra handle enemies alright

[Psych]

The magic triangle mimics the weapon triangle. Anime is Lances, Light is Swords, Dark is Axes. I just think they shouldn't have made Dark so heavy and maybe shifted some weight from Light onto Anima.

[dondon151]

light magic in FE6 is really shitty, too

i get the impression that light is not supposed to be a primary means of offense. prior to the introduction of the monk class, all light magic users either used staves (most started off using staves) or other forms of magic.

[Nicolas]

Anima is just so much OP.

Cheapest, highest Mt, lowest Wt.

That's wrong.

[Paper Jam]

Part of the problem (if it is a problem) with Light magic in FE6 (and FE9, for that matter) is that only certain promoted healers can use it.

Which fits in neatly with dondon's idea that light magic isn't supposed to be offensive.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Paper Jam

[Florete]

I think they believed the crit bonus would balance out the lower MT and higher accuracy, but the tomes never have enough crit to balance those problems out. I do like the idea, but I think the weight should have been dropped by 1-2 points each and the MT raised by 1 on some of the stronger tomes, along with more crit. That way they'd still be inferior in MT and weight but have enough crit to justify the losses.

And Serra is a plenty good combat unit.

[NinjaMonkey]

Fe9 and 10 have the identical wt problem.

In Radiant Dawn, all of the Light Magic tomes are rather lightweight compared to their Anima cousins. For example, the Light tome has a weight of one, but the Fire tome has a weight of three, Ellight has a weight of three, compared to Elfire's five, etc.

[Baldrick]

In my opinion magic users tend to be mostly the same, unless they have staff utility. It'd be neat if light magic had non-existent might but insane crit, to give them a different niche from other magic users.

[Tamanoir]

I like the theory (though they should always be lighter than their anima counterparts), but that doesn't work that well.

May be why they decided to drop it on the later game.

Nosferatu have become a Black Magic, and Aura is also a Black Magic at heart (Heavy but does tremendous amount of damage).

In my opinion magic users tend to be mostly the same, unless they have staff utility. It'd be neat if light magic had non-existent might but insane crit, to give them a different niche from other magic users.

That's the basic idea, though never really well implemented. Still makes it inferior to Anima

If you could add some Brave effect maybe. I always thought Light Magic would work really well with this.

[Wizard]

I plan to release a collection of patches for the GBA FE games at some point; including a basic balance patch for FE6, a random reclass for FE8, a patch that changes the stats of tomes in FE8 and FE7 to be a little more balanced, and a patch for FE8 that removes trainees and replaces them with standard 'Est' units.

[Lady Hortensia]

Lightmagic has the worst might. So it is inconsistent, that it has a higher weight than anima magic. It really punishes the attacking power and attacking speed of lightmages. It would be fair, if lightmagic had the lowest weight of all magic types like in most other FE games.

[Shadow Stalker X]

It always seems like Light magic to me has had problems fitting in with the other spell types. I had my own idea for its own niche. Give it low MT, but make them all siege magic (a.k.a. 3-10 range), though give them varying ranges, like 3-5, 6-8,7-10, etc.

[X-Naut]

Whenever I think of Light magic I imagine it as a light, accurate, weak magic type that's effective against magic-using enemies (other than Priest/Cleric/Bishop). If this were true it would further drive home the Bishop and Valkyries' secondary role as anti-magic units and be less redundant with other magic types. Sages could also make use of it in exchange for de-emphasizing or eliminating their staff utility to make them stand out as a jack-of-all-trades/offensive magic unit.

In addition I would support returning to the SNES magic trinity (Light and Dark beat Anima and are neutral to each other) so that you aren't penalized for using it against its intended target.

[bottlegnomes]

Baldrick's idea was what I had in mind, though not necessarily non-existent might, just noticeable low. You'd need to give them really high crit rates, like a base of 30. Then the trade between anima and light would be more like silver vs a killer than iron vs slim. Obviously this would present balance issues, but at least light would have a niche then.

[Baldrick]

You could use that for a base, and have higher ranks of light magic gain extra crit instead of might; for example, the A level light magic has 0 mt 100 crit. That would make them more of a anti-physical unit than anti-magic.

[Wizard]

100 crit is a bit much, if you ask me, even if it doesn't have any might. Maybe 50 or 60?

I think that light magic should have reduced weight, and some boosted might and crit in places. For example, Lightning could have 10 crit and Shine could have 15.

[bottlegnomes]

100 crit is a bit much, if you ask me, even if it doesn't have any might. Maybe 50 or 60?

That's what I was thinking: something like a high hit ruin from Awakening.

I think that light magic should have reduced weight, and some boosted might and crit in places. For example, Lightning could have 10 crit and Shine could have 15.

Even 10 or 15 would still most likely be too low to make a noticeable difference. Look at SMs and Berserkers from 6 to 7.

Edited April 12, 2014 by bottlegnomes

[ViewtifulBo]

I personally would make it the lightest based magic compared to anima and dark. Give it a bit of crit instead of might and I'm a happy camper.